Campaigning in Cuba

by George Kennan

When, on May 26, Commodore Schley, with the Flying Squadron, arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor, and began the blockade of that port, the great need of his vessels was a safe and sheltered coaling-station. The heavy swell raised along the southern coast of Cuba by the prevailing easterly winds makes it often dangerous and always difficult to lay a collier alongside a battle-ship in the open sea and transfer coal from one to the other. Understanding and appreciating this difficulty, Secretary Long telegraphed Admiral Sampson on May 28 to consider the question whether it would not be possible to "seize Guantanamo and occupy it as a coaling-station." Sampson replied that he thought it might be done, and immediately cabled Commodore Schley off Santiago as follows: "Send a ship to examine Guantanamo with a view to occupying it as a base, coaling one heavy ship at a time." The official correspondence thus far published does not show whether Commodore Schley received this order in time to act upon it before Sampson arrived or not; but as soon as the latter came he caused a reconnaissance of Guantanamo Bay to be made, decided that the lower part of it might be seized by a comparatively small land force if protected by the guns of a few war-ships, and immediately sent to Key West for the first battalion of marines, which was the only available landing force at his command. Meanwhile the auxiliary cruiser Yankee bombarded and burned a Spanish blockhouse situated on a hill near the entrance to the lower harbor of Guantanamo, and on June 8 Captain McCalla, in the Marblehead, seized and occupied—as far as he could do so without a landing force—all that part of the bay which lies between the entrance and the narrow strait leading to the fortified post of Caimanera.

The marines, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington, arrived on the steamer Panther, Friday, June 10, and proceeded at once to disembark. The place selected for a landing was a low, rounded, bush-covered hill on the right, or eastern, side of the bay, about a quarter of a mile from the entrance. On the summit of this hill the Spaniards had made a little clearing in the chaparral and erected a small square blockhouse; but inasmuch as this blockhouse had already been destroyed and its garrison driven to the woods by the fire of the Yankee, all that the marines had to do was to occupy the abandoned position and again fortify the hill. In some respects this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded by a range of higher hills a little farther to the eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher slopes of the wooded range which runs parallel with the bay on its eastern side.

The landing was made, without opposition, about two o'clock on the afternoon of Friday, June 10. Under cover of the guns of the war-ships, the marines disembarked on the strip of beach at the foot of the hill; burned all the houses and huts left by the Spaniards, so as to guard against the danger of infection with yellow fever; and then deployed up the hill, pitched their shelter-tents on its eastern slope, and spent all the afternoon and a large part of the next day in landing ammunition and stores, establishing outposts, and making arrangements for a permanent camp.

The Spaniards, who must have been watching these operations from the concealment of the bushes and from the slopes of the adjacent hills, gave no sign, at first, of their presence; but seeing that the marines were comparatively few in number, they finally plucked up courage, and about five o'clock Saturday afternoon began a desultory, skirmishing attack which lasted the greater part of that day and night, and, indeed, continued, with an occasional intermission, for three or four days and nights. Major Cochrane, who described the fight to me, said that he slept only an hour and a half in four days, and that many of his men became so exhausted that they fell asleep standing on their feet with their guns in their hands.

The strength of the marine battalion at that time was between five and six hundred men. They were armed with rifles of the Lee or Lee-Metford pattern, and had, in addition, two automatic Colt machine-guns and three rapid-fire Hotchkiss cannon of three-inch caliber. The greatest disadvantage under which they labored was that due to the tangled, almost impenetrable nature of the chaparral that surrounded the camp, and the facilities which it afforded the enemy for concealment and stealthy approach. The gunboats shelled the woods from time to time, drove the hidden Spaniards back, and silenced their fire; but as soon as night fell they would creep silently up through the bushes until they were so near to the camp that the pickets of the marines could smell the smoke of their cigarettes, and yet could neither see them nor hear them. Then the nocturnal skirmishing would begin again. There were six successive attacks from different directions on the night of the 11th, and a still greater number on the night of the 12th, with more or less desultory skirmishing during the day, so that for a period of forty-eight hours the gallant marines had no rest or sleep at all.

There was some danger, at first, that the enemy, reinforced from Caimanera or Guantanamo city, would assemble in force on the slopes of the eastern hills, creep up through the scrub until they were within a short distance of the camp, and then overwhelm the marines in a sudden rush-assault. They were known to have six thousand regulars at Guantanamo city, only about fifteen miles away, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that they might detach a large part of this force for offensive operations on the eastern side of the lower bay. To provide for this contingency, and to strengthen his defensive position, Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington withdrew his men from the eastern slope of the hill, where they had first been stationed, and posted them on the crest and upper part of the western slope, where they would be nearer the fleet and better protected by its guns. At the same time our small force, in the intervals of fighting, dug a trench and erected a barricade around the crest of the hill on the land side, so as to enlarge the clearing, give more play to the automatic and rapid-fire guns, and make it more difficult for the enemy to approach unseen. When this had been done, there was little probability that a rush-assault would succeed. The best troops in the world, unless they were in overwhelming force, could hardly hope to cross a clearing that was swept by the fire of six hundred rifles, two machine-guns, and three Hotchkiss cannon hurling canister or shrapnel.

In the course of the first three days' engagement the marines were joined by eighty or a hundred Cuban insurgents; but opinions differ as to the value of the latter's coöperation. Some officers with whom I talked spoke favorably of them, while others said that they became wildly excited, fired recklessly and at random, and were of little use except as guides and scouts. Captain Elliott, who saw them under fire, reported that they were brave enough, but that their efficiency as fighting men was on a par with that of the enemy; while Captain McCalla called attention officially to their devotion to freedom, and said that one of them, who had been shot through the heart, died on the field, crying with his last breath: "Viva Cuba libre!"

At the end of the third day's fighting, all attacks of the Spaniards having been repulsed, Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington determined to take the offensive himself. About six miles southeast of the camp, at a place called Cuzco, there was a well from which the Spanish troops were said to obtain all their drinking-water, and a heliograph signal-station by means of which they maintained communication with Caimanera. On the morning of June 14 Captain Elliott, with two companies of marines and about fifty Cuban volunteers, was sent to attack this place, drive the Spaniards away, and destroy the well and signal-station. The expeditionary force engaged the enemy, five hundred strong, about eleven o'clock in the morning, and fought with them until three in the afternoon, driving them from their position and inflicting upon them a loss of sixty men killed and one hundred and fifty wounded. Then, after capturing the heliograph outfit, burning the station, and filling up the well, the heroic little detachment returned, exhausted but triumphant, to its camp, with a loss of only two men killed, six wounded, and twenty or thirty overcome by heat.

On the fourth day of the long struggle for the possession of Guantanamo Bay, the Spaniards virtually gave up the contest and abandoned the field. A few guerrillas still remained in the chaparral, firing occasionally at long range either into the camp or at the vessels of the fleet; but, finally, even this desultory, long-range target practice ceased, and the last of the enemy fled, either to the fort at Caimanera or to Guantanamo city, leaving the plucky marines in undisputed control of the whole eastern coast of the lower bay. Our total loss in the series of engagements was only six men killed and twelve or fifteen wounded; but among the killed was the lamented Dr. Gibbs, acting assistant surgeon, United States navy, who was shot at one o'clock on the night of the 11th.

After the four days of fighting were over, Captain McCalla, with the Marblehead, the auxiliary cruiser St. Louis, and the battle-ship Texas, steamed up the bay to the little village of Caimanera, demolished the fort there with a few well-directed shots, and drove the garrison back into the woods. In the course of this expedition the Marblehead and the Texas ran into a number of submarine contact mines, or fouled them with their screws; but, fortunately, none of them exploded. The firing-pins had become so incrusted with barnacles and other marine growths during their long immersion that the force of the blow when the ships struck them did not drive them in far enough to explode the charges. When we reached Guantanamo in the State of Texas, Captain McCalla's boats and launches had thoroughly explored and dragged the lower bay, and had taken out safely no less than thirteen contact mines, each containing about one hundred pounds of guncotton. The upper bay was still in the possession of the Spaniards; but its control was not a matter of any particular importance. What Admiral Sampson wanted was a safe and sheltered coaling-and repairing-station for the vessels of his fleet, and this he obtained when his war-ships and marines, after four days of almost incessant fighting, drove the Spanish troops from the whole eastern coast of the lower bay.